From Amazon.co.uk

The Dutch painter Vermeer has remained one of the great enigmas of 17th-century Dutch art. While little is known of his personal life, his extraordinary paintings of natural and domestic life, with their subtle play of light and colour, have come to define the Dutch Golden Age. The mysterious portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has fascinated art historians for centuries, and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's second novel of the same title.

Girl with a Pearl Earring centres on Vermeer's prosperous household in Delft in the 1660s. The appointment of the quiet, perceptive heroine of the novel, the servant Griet, gradually throws the household into turmoil as Vermeer and Griet become increasingly intimate, an increasingly tense situation that culminates in her working for Vermeer as his assistant, and ultimately sitting for him as a model. Chevalier deliberately cultivates a limpid, painstakingly observed style in homage to Vermeer, and the complex domestic tensions of the Vermeer household are vividly evoked, from the jealous, vain, young wife to the wise, taciturn mother-in-law. At times the relationship between servant and master seems a little anachronistic, but Girl with a Pearl Earring does contain a final delicious twist in its tail. Chevalier acknowledges her debt to Simon Schama's classic study of the Dutch Golden Age, The Embarrassment of Riches, and the novel comes hard on the heels of Deborah Moggach's similar tale of domestic intrigue behind the easel of 17th-century Dutch painting, Tulip Fever.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a fascinating piece of speculative historical fiction, but how much more can novelists extract from the Dutch Golden Age? --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

特蕾西·雪佛蘭（Tracy Chevalier）1962齣生於美國華盛頓，1984年遷居英格蘭。1994年獲得英國東安哥拉大學創意寫作碩士學位。處女作《純藍》一舉獲得史密斯文學奬年度新人奬；《墮落天使》引起瞭世人的普遍關注。《戴珍珠耳環的少女》是雪佛蘭備受贊譽的代錶作，將她歸入偉大作傢的行列。其作品多以舊時女子試圖突破環境限製、改變自身命運為主題，細膩敏銳，纏綿悱惻，意味幽遠。

雪佛蘭纔一個心願是要賞遍維梅爾存世真跡。她從欣賞《戴珍珠耳環的少女》真跡中得到靈感，以維梅爾創作此畫為核心，巧妙地鑲嵌進瞭畫傢另外重要名畫，以細膩的筆觸與獨到的視點，刻畫齣畫傢與妻子及少女之間的復雜關係，將一齣傷魂恨情幽幽展開……